Dell Latitude D830

Introduction

This is a guide to running Linux with the Dell Latitude D830 laptop. This laptop is similar to the Dell Latitude D630 so both these laptop's compatibility guide are more or less the same (assuming similar configuration).

This guide is intended to provide you details on how well this laptop works with Linux and which modules you need to configure. For details on how to actually install and configure the required modules have a look at our guides section for distribution specific instructions.

Notes

If you haven't purchased the D830 yet try and get it with the Intel 3945ABG wireless controller. The versions with the 4965AGN and the Dell 1390/1490 are harder to get working. The model tested here has the 3945ABG which works fine. See the related resources section below for details for these cards (the Dell 1390 and 1490 would probably require the ndiswrapper module).

Depending on the kernel configuration of your Linux distribution, the DVD drive may not be able to be detected. Because of this you may need a external USB optical drive or some similar method to install Linux. This is a problem with Fedora 7.

The Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M which is included with the Latitude D830 does not function with the built in nv module so you have to use the proprietary nvidia module. You can find installation details for this driver here.

The latest 1.0.15rc2 of the ALSA modules are required to get sound working properly on the Latitude D830. Many Linux distributions will require you to update. Ubuntu 7.10 does not have this issue.

Summary

Linux support on the Dell Latitude D830 is very poor. It take some work and Linux knowledge to get sound and graphics working properly and possible the wireless controller as well. Update: Newer Linux distributions such as Ubuntu 7.10, OpenSUSE 10.3 and Mandriva Linux 2008 now properly support this laptop. The Intel wireless, graphics and sound now work as standard making this laptop a good choice with these distributions. The Dell 1390/1490 are still not recommended.

I've recently moved to Ubuntu 13.10 (Desktop AMD 64 bits - Kernel 3.11.0-17) and experienced a bug which prevented my computer from rebooting and shutting down, and also my wireless card couldn't be recognized. A kernell panic, like the one described by Joseph Cheek, occured.

I took almost a week to find out that the latest available version of the 'bcmwl-kernel-source' package (Version: 6.30.223.141+bdcom-0ubuntu1), which was automatically installed with Ubuntu, was the source of all the problems. In order to fix the problem I had to uninstall it and install other packages.

I've also tested other Ubuntu versions on this machine (12.04 LTS AMD64, 13.04 AMD64 and 13.10 i386) and had the exact same problem. However, in 2009 when I had Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) this issue wasn't present. This Broadcom's open-source driver (bcmwl-kernel-source) was released right after on that same year, for Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala).

I've posted, at Ask Ubuntu, some informations about the packages that should be changed in order to have the wireless card working. I've also written something about the compatibility issues concerning this driver and the Ubuntu Kernel. You can check it out at:

I have found Suse 10.3 to be very stable on my Dell D830. I do not use suspend, but I have tried the Firewire interface using a Canon ZR850 Camcorder with Kino (video editor app) and it has major problems trying to read and display video from a digital tape. The Kino screen freezes during playback, but seems to continue to record to a file ok. I also get a bunch of Firewire errors during reading. I could not get the newer 1394 stack to work so at all so I reverted to the older 1394 stack, which is the one I used for testing Kino. I also compile a recent kernel with real-time extensions (2.6.26.6-rt11-bigsmp) and no help there either. Anyone gotten the Firewire to work using the 1394 interface?

J. Estes

J. Kirk, 2009/01/31 03:07

Got the 830 about two months ago. I have yet to get any Atheros based WiFi cards to work. They both currently work on my much older 630 so I know the cards work. I've tried FC9, FC9_64, FC10 and FC10_64. The 630 runs FC9 very well. I really need these cards to work. I've also tried the drivers from linuxwireless to no avail. Killed ath5k and tried the MadWifi, no joy.

Other than that, it seems to work fairly well. The Intel 4965 works great, audio is fine, video is fine, blutooth.. worked initially but had a problem connecting my mouse this afternoon. I can afford to wait a little while but … tick tick tick

AudriusA, 2008/12/01 22:07

For me it works like a clock with Fedora 10 Cambridge. Better support than from Mac OS for Mac hardware! The full screen resolution is ok, the wireless easily manages WPA2 AES in a user friendly way, suspend and resume both work flawlessly and also connecting the presentation projector finally switches dual head mode immediately - no longer need to restart X.

When ordering, however, watches that components should have FOSS drivers so mine configuration is with Intel GMA X3100, not with NVidia. Also, some ambitions has been sacrified on wireless, picking Dell 1490.

grateful, 2008/10/31 00:52

1390 wireless card “native” Linux driver

You wiki has helped me greatly with a recently purchased D830, thanks guys!Recently after struggling once again with ndiswrapper+1390 wireless card I happened to find out that Broadcom has released “native” Linux driver for its bcm43xx based wireless card:

Finally we might be able to say “goodbye” to the ndiswrapper and windows driver…I just tested it out on my 1390/bcm4311 card it seems to be working all right :D Cheers!

Just in case you guys haven't got chance to update :P.

Sparky, 2008/09/21 05:57

openSuse 10.3

I have openSuse 10.3 running on the D830 straight out of the box. I tried Kubuntu 8.04 before the suse, but no luck there for my video and motherboard chipset. Suse installed and recognized everything right away.

I have the the Intel X3100 video, so video is not too perfect. Cannot play any video full screen, and especially not if I have compiz enabled. Compiz runs alright, but means no other graphics if it is enabled.

OpenSUSE 11, 2008/08/16 08:52

OpenSUSE 11

With OpenSUSE 10.3 and 11 work quite well out of the box, incl. wireless, dvd recorder. My only concerns are as follows:

Major issues:

When the auto-dimm setting is enabled, the mouse and keyboard become very unresponsive, e.g. when you close the lid or when the system is idle for a while when AC power is disconnected.

Suspend to disk and suspend to ram are not working. The system just won't come back to life.

Minor issues:

With OpenSUSE 10.3 the “wireles enabled” and the “bluetooth” LED's worked fine. With OpenSUSE 11 both LEDs are always turned off.

tturrisi, 2008/05/24 15:11

Debian Sid

I've been running Debian Sid on the d830 for 8 months with very few issues. Yes, it takes some work to get all the hardware working…but well worth the effort. I have a guide for everything here:http://members.cox.net/tonyt/d830/

Praj, 2008/04/21 04:08

Ubuntu gutsy

I installed ubunut gutsy for D830 from 4GB a pen drive . With some updates everything works fine .

I didnt want to mess my windows drive - hence the USB soultion .

The graphics was very choppy - youtube would flicker … But I had a spare hard drive sitting on my desk ( much after installation) and I mounted swap on hard drive - works balzing fast now .

- laptop does run a bit warmer than windows — very unlike linux

- When I tried Gutsy 64 bit - it could not load the graphics at all — there was no X … i didnt have any more patience for that .

- Another note about this laptop - it runs cool and silent for the first couple of weeks , when you have enough stuff on you hard drive — all those vanish into thin air .. It is one of the hottest laptops I have had ….. nothing makes it hotter than watching something on NETFLIX …. i can swear i can fry a omlette on its back …

j_h_snyder aka linlap at j h snyder dot com, 2007/09/24 06:05

I've had a D830 for about a month, installed FC7 on it, have had no issues that I can't live with until the FC/alsa developers include fixes. I use it primarily as a work/e-mail/browsing/travel machine, not recreation.

1) IIRC the nv module worked for me with NVS140, but I switched to the livna repackaging of the nvidia binary drivers immediately

2) audio doesn't work, known problem with ALSA, I've read that the short-term fix is to compile the kernel with ALSA in the kernel (not as a module)

3) I've read that the DVD problem has been fixed, don't remember how I installed, but I'd swear I used the rescue CD and then installed the dvd image from an external hard drive just for convenience.

4) I downloaded the 4956AGN firmware from the Intel web site, easy instructions once I found them (navigation there confusing), had zero problem installing and running, it's working way better than the wistron atheros miniPC card I had in my inspiron 8500.. way stronger rx signal

Two annoying problems I haven't been able to diagnose:

A) suspend to RAM doesn't work. Or rather it does, but the LCD never comes back when I take it out of suspend. I followed the diagnostics on the HAL website here:

but the only useful information that came back was “HAL doesn't support the nvidia binary drivers.”I found no useful information in the README that comes with the nvidia release. just looked at the nvidia forum, but wasn't able to figure how to search.

Open to suggestions from anyone who has gotten suspend to work on *their* D830 with the proprietary nvidia modules.

B) PCcards that present a USB interface to the system are rejected by the ACPI and/or ohci_hcd subsystem with the following error in syslog:

by “present USB interface to the system” I mean cards which when inserted on another machine invoke USB handlers and install USB hubs or create devices like /dev/ttyUSB0. The cards I've tried include Verizon EVDO cards (Sierra Wireless, Novatel, Kyocera) and brand X PCcard→USB adapters (ie add two USB ports to the system with a PCcard). The Novatel installs on my fc6 inspiron 8500 as /dev/ttyACM0, but I think that's still USB.

PCcards that do *not* present a USB interface to the system seem to work just fine, eg ethernet.

Incidentally, USB devices that plug into the USB ports work just fine.

I haven't seen this PCcard/USB issue mentioned anywhere else, so I'd be grateful if someone could try it on their D830 and either mail me or post a comment here. No idea whether it's an ICH8 issue or an ACPI implementation issue. Oh, forgot to mention, the EVDO cards work just fine on the D830 under windozeXP, so it's not a hardware fault in the D830.

Incidentally, the IBM T61P with the NVS140 is an almost identical machine to the D830, so that's another place to check for solutions to problems with fc7 on Dell's D830, I would guess that up to things that can be tied to BIOS or ACPI issues, anything that works on the T61P should work on the D830, and v-v. And ditto “broken”. Just be sure doing comparisons that the machine configurations are the same.

and C) not exactly a problem, I just haven't looked into it, AHCI SATA v compatible SATA or whatever. The BIOS has the drive interface set as 'compatible'. I read somewhere that it's easy to switch between the two, but when I changed to AHCI in the BIOS, it wouldn't boot, panic'd because it couldn't find the disc, I think. This is probably a trivial sort of thing, I just haven't followed up on it.

A couple other suggestions: I bought 1 stick of 512M DDR2 RAM from Dell, pulled it out and replaced with 4G of Mushkin RAM for $200, cheapest I could find at the time. I think several vendors are now selling at about that price.

I bought the 80g SATA from Dell, not quite cheapest, but only slightly more than 60g, pulled it out, replaced it with a 250g WD from newegg. (A few comments from customers at the newegg website about SMART failing on the WD w/i a couple of weeks, so turn on SMART logging or buy some other disc.)

No problems on either, but if you do this *be* *sure* *to* *be* *careful* playing with DIMMs .. follow the instructions. I damaged either one memory socket or the memory drivers on my 8500 by being a little too cavalier seating the DIMM.